Sunday, May 29, 2016

Week 9 "Space+ Art"

Space, the final frontier, has always been considered as a destination shrouded in mystery. With mystery comes the prospect of inspiration and creativity. In fact, images and topics relating to space have often been related with the concept of "art". From futuristic "space-age" drawings to the designs of space "invaders" such as the Alien (from Alien film series), space provides artists with an abundant source of niches in which to project their creativity and thoughts.

H.R. Giger's artistic concept of the "Space Jockeys" for the Alien film series

While artistic space-related drawings have often been definitive of the "art" associated with space, some actually consider images of space as rather artistic as well. For example, images taken from the Hubble Space Telescope and NASA-related images have been deemed as artistic, if not, art.

Nebulas such as this would seem like a creative piece from a modern artist

Of course, art itself is an age-old craft. Despite never having seen the stars with the clarity we do today, famous painters from the past have also used the cosmos as their inspiration to produce some of the most important paintings of this century.

Van Gogh's "Starry Night" is the paramount of space-inspried art from the past

Therefore, it can said that space/cosmos has been intertwined since long ago. Even without modern technologies such as the Hubble Space Telescope, artists have been using the stars as their inspiration for many years. Of course, now that we do have telescopes that can take high resolution images of the stars and beyond, we have started to appreciate the beauty of space.